Tablet Plus

Pelican Hotel

18.0

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From $159.20
Check availability as rates may vary for dates. Best rate guaranteed.

Miami Beach is home to more than a few slightly over-the-top hotels, and it can be an unsettling experience trying to reconcile the total design excess with the pervasive atmosphere of high seriousness. Fortunately there’s one place that seems utterly self-aware; the Pelican is as flauntingly ostentatious as they come, but with an almost Warholian wink—this is a fantasyland with no pretentions to authenticity, a playful and almost pranksterish put-on, with the guests fully in on the joke.

And what else would one expect from the Diesel fashion group? A hotel owned by an old-school fashion dynasty would paper its walls in its own logo, and emboss its label on every flat surface. Here the approach is a bit more theatrical; each of the Pelican’s rooms looks like it could have been a backdrop for one of the iconoclastic label’s highly artificial advertising shoots. The Psychedelic(ate) Girl room is as faithful a rendition of the Sixties London fantasy as we’ve seen, and the Born in the Stars & Stripes room does Americana kitsch the way it seems only a Swedish decorator could do it. The ever-popular Best Whorehouse room, though, may be Magnus Ehrland’s magnum opus, a masterwork of boudoir chic that’s liable to make you feel a bit dirty just walking through the door.

The list goes on, and there’s something for almost every taste, from the ultra-feminine Power Flower to the leather-and-stripes Executive Zebra suite. Everything, that is, except the norm—if you’re a diehard fan of white-on-white, or fussy Art Deco revivalism, try just about anywhere else. If you’re looking for character, though, then the Pelican may be your place. The restaurant is casual and hip yet really rather good, a bit like its denim-empire ownership; and the bar is remarkably relaxed considering the velvet-rope madness at many Miami nightspots. This is the perfect antidote to the pretentiousness and self-satisfaction of the Miami Beach hotel scene—it’s impossible to take yourself too seriously when surrounded by photo-quality jungle-print wallpaper.

This hotel includes the following special privileges for Plus Members only: